no regulations or specifications can be formulated for carrying it out.
For this reason it will never be widely in favor. A wicked and
rebellious generation demands a sign, and in this plan there is neither
sign nor formula except that general principle of helpfulness and
willingness to place the common whole above the selfish part that is at
the antipodes of both wickedness and rebellion. It is a personal matter
and it adds one important qualification to those already necessary in
department heads--the ability to do team work. This qualification,
however, is so important, quite apart from its necessity in connection
with this plan, that we may consider it an advantage, rather than
otherwise, that the plan puts it forward and insists upon it. On the
whole I think that a library with mediocre department heads having this
qualification is better manned, and will do more satisfactory work than
one with a staff of supremely able experts, cranky, self-centered and
all pulling different ways. The efforts of members of a body like a
library staff are not to be measured arithmetically--they are what
mathematicians call “vectors”--directed quantities, like force, velocity
or acceleration. To know where a man will bring up one must have not
only his speed, but its direction. The sum of two equal forces may be
anything from zero up to their double, depending on their relative
directions, and if the sum is zero, no matter how large the components
may be, the result is precisely the same as if those components are
small, or as if neither existed. It is this sort of thing that an
eminent employer of labor had in mind when he advised, “If two of your
subordinates don’t get along together, _discharge both_ of them, no
matter how good they are.” In this man’s estimation the relative value
of team work evidently stands pretty high. I should not follow his
advice, however, without giving everyone a fair chance. I have known the
opinions of one department head about another and their ability to work
together to improve greatly on acquaintance.
The part necessarily played by the librarian in this scheme may be
regarded by some as an objection. I have already referred to
administrators who, like the late Czar of Russia, prefer to regulate all
the details of the kingdom by personal supervision. There is also the
precisely opposite type, who like to make a good machine, set it going,
and then let it alone. The trouble is that machines will not run of
themselves. They need oversight, oiling, cleaning and repairing. The
best require a minimum of all this, but all must have some of it. And
such machinery as there is in this plan requires a maximum of oversight.
It is, however, not the control of details but rather the watching of
general methods and results. Is everything running smoothly, without
“lost motion” or “backlash,” and turning out a satisfactory finished
product? If not can the trouble be located? Yes; these two cogs do not
work smoothly together. Let us find out which is at fault and adjust or
replace it; but if our investigation is fruitless, possibly the best
plan is to discard both.
I trust I have misled no one by treating here specifically of two
departments. I might have substituted the names of a dozen others. All
through library administration, and especially in the administration of
a system of branch libraries, these possibilities of conflict occur. In
branches they are generally between the branch administration and the
central departments--finance, supplies, cataloging, book-orders,
reference and circulation.
The handling of this whole matter depends, of course, on the librarian.
He it must be who is to decide on general policies or go to his Board
for a decision in cases so important that he feels their action
necessary. If the work of departments overlaps in some field where the
library’s policy has not yet been decided upon and defined, he has no
one to blame but himself if the adjustment is difficult. And if policies
are defined in advance and pains taken to inform department heads
thoroughly of their existence and import, the likelihood of serious
disagreement will be considerably lessened.
It must not be forgotten, also, that the success of any plan may be
increased or diminished by skill, or lack of skill, in handling it.
I am confident that any of the plans about which I have spoken
unfavorably above would work better under a good librarian than the best
would work under a bad one. But I forget myself; we librarians are like
Kentucky whiskey--some are better than others, but there are no bad
ones!
THREE KINDS OF LIBRARIANS[15]
The human eye is so constituted that it can see clearly but a small part
of the field of vision at one time. We have learned by habit to move it
about quickly and comprehensively, so that unless our attention is
called to the fact we do not realize this limitation; but it exists. In
like manner, it is difficult for the human mind to take a comprehensive
view of a subject. We are apt to fix upon some one feature and ignore
the rest. In recent times we have been devoting our attention to the
personal element. We talk about the “man behind the gun,” a good deal. I
would not underrate him or what he can do; but it is surely necessary to
have the gun itself before the man behind it can be effective. In fact
the man _per se_ is about the most helpless of animals. His superiority
to the mere brute lies in his ability to use tools; his inferiority in
the fact that he can do almost nothing without them. A man with a gun is
indeed formidable; a wildcat can do nothing with such a tool, but then
he is reasonably formidable without it. I have yielded thus to the
temptation to depreciate the personal element somewhat, at the beginning
of an address in which it is to be discussed, because this defect of the
human mind, that tends to fix it upon one feature to the exclusion of
others, has of late apparently led many to think that a man is valuable
in himself and by himself, without anything to work with or anything to
work on.
A man is making a failure of his job; the first thought is that he must
be replaced. Nine persons out of ten fail to inquire whether anyone at
all could have succeeded under the same conditions. Your cook prepares
an inedible meal; you rage and call loudly for a new regime in the
kitchen; whereas all the time your competent servant has been struggling
with a faulty range, tough meat and bad flour.
Shall we, then, sit down and refuse to do anything at all unless our
tools and our materials are of the best? By no means; one of the chief
distinctions between a capable and an inefficient worker lies in the
ability of the former to make the best of unpromising conditions. No one
can do as well with poor tools and materials as with good ones; but the
good worker will turn out a better job with the former than the
inefficient one will.
These things apply of course to the library worker as to all others,
especially to librarians in small towns where tools and materials are
apt to be not of the best. Among tools we may reckon buildings, books,
and all kinds of library appliances. The material is the community on
which the librarian by proper use of her tools aims to produce a certain
effect.
Now it is open to such a worker to view her task from any one of three
different standpoints--to choose, we will say, from three different
kinds of librarianship. She may be a librarian of the day before
yesterday, of yesterday, or of to-day.
The librarian of the day before yesterday is the librarian of a part of
the community. Not only does she make no effort to encourage the use of
her library, but she distinctly discourages certain persons, and certain
classes of persons, from entering it. This grade of librarian includes
as many kinds as there are persons or classes of the community that may
be discouraged. Some, for instance, exclude all the poorly-dressed, or
all of inferior social status; others welcome just these and exclude the
well-dressed and well-to-do. The philanthropic donor of a city branch
library building once waxed very wroth when she saw a carriage standing
in front of the building. Her library, she said, was for the poor, not
for “carriage people.”
These ways of looking at things are sometimes an inheritance from former
conditions. A subscription library turned into a free public library
hesitates to welcome, all at once, the lower strata that have so long
been banished from its doors. On the other hand, a public library that
has developed from a charitable foundation regards these as its proper
users and looks askance at the well-to-do, as in the case of the good
lady with her “carriage people.”
When I speak of the exclusion of a class of persons, I do not mean that
they are formally kept out or even consciously discouraged; this is why
it is so easy to be a librarian of the day before yesterday. That day
was a comfortable day; an easy day to be self-satisfied in; it had its
libraries for the rich and its libraries for the poor. Some class was
always named, even if some were always left out.
It may be that the exclusion operates through features that are in
themselves excellent. I have seen, in a small community, a library
building so fine, with such an atmosphere of quiet good-taste and so
lady-like a librarian, that the great public no more dared to enter
therein than if a fierce lion had stood in the doorway. I have known
libraries, too, in which the books were too good. Certain classes in the
community where not intellectually up to them.
I have also known libraries that were never used by the foreigners in
their communities, or by the colored people. These latter, strange to
say, were largely in the North. The South recognizes the Negro and pays
him much attention--in its way. It settles his status and sees that it
is observed. He has the last four seats on the trolley car and he has
his separate library accommodations. In the North he is on an equality
with the white man--in everything but reality. He is welcomed to the
library in theory and he does not use it in practice. I fear that in
this respect too many of us belong to the day before yesterday.
I trust that I have made it clear that the librarian of
day-before-yesterday is not a bad librarian. He or she is just a
librarian of day before yesterday--that is all.
Now we will step into one of Mr. H.G. Wells’ “Time machines” and take a
short spin ahead into yesterday. The librarian of yesterday excludes no
one at all from his library; for he is within one step of being
up-to-date. He discourages no person nor any class of persons. He stands
in his doors with outstretched arms and announces that his library is
free to all, that it has books for all--rich and poor, old and young,
barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. The selection of books is well
thought-out and adapted to the community in which it is. The
accommodations are ample and fitting. Everyone is welcome. What more
could you ask? Nothing at all; provided you are still in yesterday.
Yesterday this sort of library was regarded as the last word in the
popularization of the book, and it is indeed a long step in advance of
day-before-yesterday. The librarian’s material is before him; he has
good books; is more needed than this? Yea, verily. One may have a nail
and a hammer to drive it; also an egg, and a pan to fry it, yet one
cannot fry the egg with the hammer. Some selective action is necessary
before we can attain the result that we want. A minister, presiding at a
wedding, in which several couples were to be united at once, read the
marriage service and then exclaimed: “I pronounce you men and wives; now
you can sort yourselves.” The trouble is that things will not “sort
themselves”; they must have some one to sort them--and this is what is
the matter with the library and the librarian of yesterday. They fail to
make connection between the man and the book, so that part of the fine
collection remains wholly or relatively unused, and part of the
community that it ought to serve remains apart from the library, despite
the librarian’s outstretched arms and his words of welcome. If he had
read his Bible as his great-grandparents used to do, he would have
realized that to fill the table at the wedding feast of literature and
life a simple invitation sufficeth not. We must go out into the highways
and hedges and compel them to come in. The attitude of passive
expectancy, of ability and willingness to serve those who come, was well
enough for yesterday, but not for the new library day that has dawned in
these United States of America. Apparently the library dawn moves
eastward as the physical day moves westward, for over in the mother
country only a few lofty peaks are yet gilded by its sunshine. Even in
our own land there are gorges where the dusk lingers; there are even
grottoes where darkness will always be. But we are mostly in the light.
We realize that if we have a book on the dyeing of textile fabrics and
if there is an unheeding man in our community who would be helped by
that book, all the complacent receptivity that we can muster will not
suffice to bring them together. And with this knowledge comes an
awakening of conscience. Long ago we stopped crying out “Am I my
brother’s keeper?” We realize that as members of the community we must
bear our share of responsibility for what is done in the community and
that collectively we must take measures for the community’s welfare.
Each of us is a Roman dictator, in that it is our business to see that
the Republic suffers no harm. Thus the community appoints special
officers to look out for the interests of its members in certain
directions. We public librarians are such officers. We are proud of
saying that we stand on the same plane as the teachers in our schools
and the professors in our colleges; nay, even a little higher, for the
facilities for education over which we preside are offered long after
school and college years are over.
Now the teacher does not stand in the doorway and announce that she is
willing and ready to instruct all who may so desire in reading, writing
and arithmetic--that she has a well-equipped schoolroom, blackboards,
globes and textbooks for all who will take advantage of them. Not so;
the community goes out and compels its members to take advantage of all
these things. In like manner, also, the community makes all sorts of
laws for its own preservation and betterment; it does not say “See, here
are good laws; come ye who will and obey them.” On the contrary it goes
out into highways and hedges and sees that all its members obey.
I would not push this analogy too far. No one expects that the community
will require that every one within its borders shall use the public
library so many times a month, or, indeed that it shall be used at all.
The nature of the institution precludes such compulsion. But it should
require that every effort be made to see that no section of the books on
the library shelves shall lie idle and that no section of the community
shall fail to use books, either through ignorance or through doubt of a
welcome.
The librarian should say: Here is an unused book. Is it without value in
this community? Then let it make place for a better. Has it value? Then
why is it not used? Somewhere, in this community, is the man, woman or
child, who, whether realizing it or not, would derive pleasure or
profit, or both from reading it. It is my business to seek out that
person.
Again: Here is a man who does not read books. Is this because no book
would appeal to him? Impossible! He may think so, but there lives no one
to whom the soul of some fellow man, speaking through the printed page,
will not bring a welcome message. Is there such a book on my shelves? If
so, it is my business to get it into that man’s hands; if not, I must
buy, beg or borrow it as soon as I may.
When the librarian has begun to talk in this fashion, lo! the dawn is
shining, he is a librarian of to-day. The librarian of to-day frowns on
no one, discourages no one; and he stands not passively at his door with
open arms. He walks through his library; he walks through his town. He
knows the books in one and the dwellers in the other, and he knows both
in their relationships, actual and possible. If there are disused books
on his shelves or non-readers in his community, it is not because he has
made no effort to bring them together; his failures are not those of
negligence.
The other day, sitting in a stalled trolley car, my eye fell upon a
street-cleaner, and I began to watch him with interest. He was
busy--apparently, I was going to say, but that does him injustice. He
was really busy. While I watched him--and the car was delayed for some
little time--he was constantly at work, pushing over the asphalt the
broad scraper that was intended to rid it of dust and refuse. And yet he
did not clean the street, for he took no account of the inequalities of
its surface. These required intelligent adaptation of his movements at
every instant, and to this he paid no attention. He went through the
motions; his actual expenditure of physical energy was probably as great
as if he had mixed a little brain-work with it, but it failed to
accomplish what it ought, simply from that lack. And yet it would have
been difficult for any overseer to give him orders that would have
bettered the matter. It would have been hard to point out at any given
instant, his errors of commission or of omission. The only way in which
one could tell that he was not doing his work properly was by the
result. He was put there to clean the street--and the street was not
cleaned.
So with the librarians of yesterday and the day before. They are hard
workers, not idlers. They have the tools, and they go through the
motions. They may tire themselves out with their labor. Their library
buildings may be attractive and clean; their technique perfect, their
books well selected and in good order, their catalogs excellent. It is
hard to point to any one thing that they are doing incorrectly or that
they are omitting. And yet we must judge their work by its fruits; they
are put into a community of actual or potential readers in charge of a
collection of books. What are these for, if not to be read? Yet many
remain untouched. For what purpose have the schools taught the
townspeople to read? Thousands of them make no good use of that
knowledge. To the librarian of to-day the non-realization of this and
the lack of effort to remedy it mean failure. In order to make a little
more definite our ideas of these three kinds of librarians, let us
consider one or two very practical problems and see how each would
probably view them and act upon them.
First. The library circulates no books on plumbing. For the librarian of
the day before yesterday, this is no problem at all. Probably his
library has no books on plumbing. His library is not for plumbers, and
he has never suspected that it could be. As for the plumbers in his
community, they too have never considered the possibility that they
might learn something of their work from books in a public library. They
are therefore silent and uncomplaining. Peace reigns and there is a
general state of satisfaction all around--the satisfaction of blissful
ignorance and of the day before yesterday.
The librarian of yesterday, on the other hand, sees the problem clearly
and is concerned about it. He has good books on plumbing and nobody
reads them. Evidently the more advanced grade of the librarian has not
affected the plumbers--they still remain in ignorance of the public
library. But what is he to do? Here is the library; here are the books;
here is the librarian, ready and willing to distribute them to all who
may come. If the generation--or any part of it--is so wicked and
perverse that it comes not, what is there to do? What, indeed! And so
library and community remain in the twilight of yesterday just before
the dawn.
The librarian of to-day not only sees the problem and is concerned about
it, but he proceeds to do something. Just what he does or how he does it
is of far less consequence than the fact that he sees action in the
matter to be necessary and possible. He may go personally and interview
the plumbers; he may send them lists; he may get permission to address
the plumbers’ union; he may do one or many of a thousand things to
remedy matters, and although it is certain that what he does will not
be completely effective, it is equally certain that it will have _some_
good effect, which is the main thing.
Problem Second. Examination of the registry list shows that there are
practically no card holders in a certain part of the town. As in the
former case, this is no problem at all to the day before yesterday
librarian. Its existence would in general not appear to him, certainly
not as the result of any kind of statistical investigation. If he were
informed of it he would regard the fact with complacency. The library is
for readers, and if certain persons are non-readers they had better keep
away. Nothing could be simpler. The librarian of yesterday, on the other
hand, feels that all is not right. It is certainly too bad that when
library privileges are offered free to all, so large a portion of the
community should fail to take advantage of them. The library stands
ready to help these people, if they will only come. Why don’t they?
The librarian of yesterday thus stops with a question; the librarian of
to-day proceeds to answer it. He finds out why they don’t come. He may
discover one or more of any number of things; whatever may be the
causes, they are sure to be interesting, at least to him, for the to-day
librarian is a born investigator. It may be that the non-readers are
literate, but take no interest in books; perhaps they say they have no
time to read; possibly the library has not the kind of books that they
like; they may be foreigners, reading no English, and the library may
have no books in their tongue. Whatever the trouble may be, the
librarian of to-day sets about to remedy it. He may not succeed; but it
is the diagnosis and the attempt at treatment, not its success, that
constitute him what he is.
Problem Third. The reading done through the library is trivial and
inconsequential. The fiction drawn is of low order, and there is little
else read. The way in which this will affect the three types of
librarian may be predicted at once. The librarian of the
day-before-yesterday heeds it not; the librarian of yesterday heeds and
perhaps worries, but does nothing. The librarian of to-day finds out the
trouble and then tries to remedy it.
And so it goes: you may construct other problems for yourselves and
imagine their solution, or lack of solution.
Now, it is obvious that there are great and evident objections to being
a librarian of to-day and corresponding advantages in being one of the
other kinds. In the first place the to-day variety of librarianship
involves brainwork and it is always difficult to use one’s brain--we saw
that in the case of the street-cleaner. Then this kind of librarian must
be always looking for trouble. Instead of congratulating himself that
all is going smoothly, he must set out with the premise that all cannot
be going smoothly. There must be some way in which his books can be made
to serve more people and serve them better; and it is his business to
find out that way. Then the to-day librarian must use his statistics.
The librarian of the day before yesterday probably takes none at all.
The librarian of yesterday collects them with diligence, but regards any
suggestion that they might be of use somewhat as the lazy wood-sawyer
did the advice that he should sharpen his saw. “I should think I had a
big enough job to cut up all this wood,” he replied petulantly, “without
stopping to sharpen saws.” The librarian of yesterday has trouble enough
in collecting and tabulating his statistics without stopping to use
them--to make any deductions from them--to learn where the library
machine is failing and where he should use the wrench or the oil can.
All these things and many others make it easier for the overworked
librarian to drop back into yesterday, or the day before. It should be
borne in mind, however, that the difference between the three types of
librarian is not so much difference in the amount of work done as it is
in attitude of mind. The librarian of to-day does not necessarily expend
more energy than the librarian of day before yesterday--but it is
expended in a different direction and with a different object. It is to
be feared that some librarians of small libraries allow themselves to
become discouraged after reading of the great things that have been
accomplished by large institutions with plenty of money to spend--the
circulation of millions of books yearly, the purchase of additions by
the tens of thousands, the provision of exhibitions for the children,
the story-telling by professionals, the huge collections on special
subjects, technology, art or history. It almost seems as if success were
simply a matter of spending and as if without money to spend, failure
should be expected as a matter of course.